The Parrot's Lament : And Other True Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence, and Ingenuity [Paperback]

Eugene Linden (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2000

A gorilla shrewdly sells back a missing key chain to the highest bidder. An orangutan picks a lock to let himself out of his zoo enclosure and two elephants adopt a tag-team strategy to keep their handlers from putting them back into theirs. In The Parrot's Lament, noted environmentalist Eugene Linden offers more than one hundred true anecdotes about animal acts of cooperation, heroism, escape--even tales of deception or manipulation of human beings. Drawing on the first-person experiences of veterinarians, field biologists, researchers, and trainers, Linden has compiled a warmly entertaining and powerfully persuasive argument for animal consciousness that, while not human, far exceeds what humans usually grant animals. Scientifically sound and emotionally compelling, The Parrot's Lament contains remarkable stories that are sure to resonate with animal lovers, turning skeptics everywhere into believers.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When Eugene Linden was writing The Parrot's Lament--a book subtitled "And Other True Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence, and Ingenuity"--he enjoyed joking around with his 2-year-old daughter Sofia. "Are you a rutabaga?" "I'm not a rutabaga!" she would giggle. "Are you a waterbug?" "I'm not a waterbug!" Soon, Sofia learned to riff off her father's teasing: "I'm not a rutabaga; Daddy is a rutabaga!" or the truly insightful, "I'm not a rutabaga; the baby is a rutabaga. I'm a waterbug!"

As a passionate and accomplished student of animal intelligence since the '70s, Linden--of course--couldn't resist comparing Sofia's reasoning to that of an ape, puzzling over the cognitive cusp upon which she teetered. And it's this affectionate but knowledgeable analysis, the gentle transition from rutabagas to metacognition and emergent symbolic ability, that makes The Parrot's Lament so satisfying, sentimental but still scientifically solid. The science of consciousness and animal intelligence is contentious, but many in the field--Linden included--deeply suspect that animals know more than we can verify. Linden lays down the science with clarity and good humor, but he leaves it to his animal coauthors, the amorous dolphins, escape-artist orangs, enigmatic cats, and lying hyenas that populate the book's scores of anecdotes, to make his argument. --Paul Hughes --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Since the 1970s, Linden (Apes, Men and Language) has argued that many animals possess humanlike intelligence. Here, he drives that point home by presenting more than 100 anecdotes "about attempts by animals to deceive or manipulate their keepers or each other, stories about games, stories of understanding and trust across the vast gulf that separates different species, stories of animal heroism, and, especially... stories about escape." Linden's sources include vets, trainers, zookeepers, field biologists and researchers. Most of the accounts involve animals that live in complex and fluid social groupsAapes, elephants, parrots, dolphinsAand that exhibit a wide range of humanlike behaviors, from trust and cooperation to deception and greed. Prominently featured are orangutansAvirtuoso escape artists with an amazing facility for using human tools; they continually test their keepers and try to outwit them. In one case, an orangutan named Fu Manchu used a piece of wire, which he had hid in his mouth, to jimmy a door lock and "effect a series of nighttime escapes at the Omaha Zoo." Other animals invent gamesApolar bears at the San Diego Zoo simulate a seal hunt, and a pair of elephants at the Bronx Zoo play hide and seek with their keepers. Linden discusses the programs that zoos have devised to enrich the lives of their animal inhabitants and the use of dolphins by the military. If the scientific community remains skeptical about the quality of animal intelligence, Linden leaves no doubt about where he stands. He accepts evidence of animal consciousness and, at the end of his brisk, detailed report, so will many readers. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Plume (August 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452280680
• ISBN-13: 978-0452280687
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #633,929 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thought-provoking, funny and touching, August 24, 2000

By 

C. Healy (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Parrot's Lament : And Other True Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence, and Ingenuity (Paperback)

It's very obvious which side of the fence the author stands on in the debate over animal intelligence, but Linden never gets preachy about his theories. Instead he presents a collection of fascinating anecdotes and lets the evidence speak for itself. That's not to say he doesn't provide any scientific insight into the stories he's telling; he does, and from both sides of the argument. But this book is not about proselytizing, it merely wants to spin some tales about animals that are at times humorous (I laughed out loud several times), at times sweet and touching, and always thought-provoking. It succeeds in its goal. I couldn't help but feel for the killer whale who grieved after giving his pregnant mate a "sonogram" and discovering she'd miscarried, or laugh at the parrot who invited a wild bird inside for dinner, or secretly cheer on the orangutan escape artists who foiled their keepers at every turn. Mostly I couldn't help but marvel at the awareness and intellect that can be seen in all of these stories. Even being an animal lover to begin with, my next visit to a zoo will carry with it a whole new respect for the animals within.

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Pleasant, even moving, but very lightweight, January 27, 2000

By 

David J. Loftus (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Parrot's Lament and Other True Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence, and Ingenuity (Hardcover)

Linden gathers anecdotes from zoo keepers, pet owners, game preserve employees, and primate researchers to suggest the range and depth of animals' ability to plan, reason, invent and employ tools, and empathize or form relationships with unfamiliar and even traditionally hostile species.

Some of the tales are highly amusing, terribly moving, or almost unbelievable. In the first category is the parrot's lament of the title, in which a female African grey bemoaned the fate of a male she did not like when her owner pulled a Cornish game hen out of the oven, and then grieved again when the owner showed her the male was still alive. As an example of the second, I think of the male orca who appeared to be monitoring his mate's pregnancy by placing his head against her tummy, and then battered his head against the edge of their Marineland pool in frustration shortly before she miscarried. Or the great ape that rescued a human infant that fell into its zoo enclosure.

Unbelievable are the many stories of orangutan ingenuity in escaping their zoo cages and yards, or the friendship between the wild turkey and the retired race horse.

I wanted to like this book more than I ended up doing. The issue of animal intelligence is an important and fascinating one, but I wish Linden had delved deeper into the philosophical and scientific implications. The anecdotes fly by with very little discussion. This approach was done better (and with remarkably little overlap in stories) a few years back by Susan McCarthy and Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson in _When Elephants Weep: the emotional lives of animals_; granted, their subject was more specifically emotions rather than cognition, but I found it a more thoughtful book.

In addition, though _The Parrot's Lament_ is competently written, I found its phrasing a little inelegant at times. I recorded it aloud for a broadcast service for the blind and elderly shut-ins ("Golden Hours" at KOPB in Portland, Oregon), and found myself stumbling over the verbiage more often than usual.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining tales of animal behavior, March 5, 2002

By 

Atheen M. Wilson "Atheen" (Mpls, MN United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Parrot's Lament : And Other True Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence, and Ingenuity (Paperback)

Eugene Linden's "Parrot's Lament" is a charming collection of animal anecdotes. The author's intent is to show that the human being is not the only animal that demonstrates mental and communicative abilities. He avoids the contention which surrounds scientific debates on the issues by simply recounting stories from his own experiences and from those of zoo keepers and naturalists, people whose only interest is in the animals they care for and not in scientific laurels or criticism. The only caveat, as he himself points out, is that because "it's unscientific...no matter how persuasive the material, one cannot use the stories and examples as proof of anything (p. xvii)." For those of us who are already convinced that animals are far brighter than most people give them credit for, this is not an important issue anyway.

The book is divided into sections, including: games and humor; trade and barter; deception, mind reading and mental chess; cooperation in work, conflict and healing; tools and intelligence; escapes from captivity; empathy and heroism; and untouched nature. Some of the material is repeated under different chapters, but when it is, it's presented from a new perspective which enlarges understanding of animal behavior. My favorite stories are some of the orangutan escape episodes, and some of the tales of trust and friendship.

The book certainly gives the reader a sense of what is being lost as our natural world is being destroyed by overpopulation, encroachment and exploitation. Since destruction of habitat seems to have taken on a life of its own these days, one almost wonders if it is unstoppable irrespective of our best intentions or of the ultimate negative impact it will have on our own future. This was particularly apparent in the last chapter of the book which deals with the Ndoki rain forest of the Congo. As was pointed out in Matt Ridley's book, The Red Queen, the incremental increase in benefit to the individual who causes the destruction of the environment increases the likelihood that the destruction will occur despite the overall long term loss to society. And this is often so, even though the individual beneficiary of the immediate good will also suffer with the rest of society. The loss of viable commonly held fields to over grazing during the Middle Ages was the example cited by Ridley (p. 91), but any other major loss of shared wealth could be substituted as well. As Linden points out, perhaps the very intellect of which we are so proud will be our ultimate undoing! We certainly don't seem to have learned from the lessons of our history!

Altogether a delightfully readable book.